This 100-Year-Old Tunnel Changed Life in Colorado Forever

Grand Junction and Montrose are just 60 miles apart, but if you’ve ever driven between the two, you know how much the landscape changes along the way. Head south on Highway 50 toward the San Juans, and you’ll leave the Grand Valley behind, pass through high desert terrain, and eventually arrive in the lush farmlands of the Uncompahgre Valley.

How did Montrose County become such a successful place for farming and ranching? It all comes down to the Gunnison Tunnel—and the brave Coloradans who had the grit to build it.

Old Unreliable: Colorado's Uncompahgre River

Read More: Thirteen Cool Facts About Colorado’s Uncompahgre River

Inconsistent rainfall and the often low quality of the water in the Uncompahgre River made farming the area a gamble. By the 1890s, Colorado farmers could already tell that without better water, the valley would remain arid, hardscrabble land.

Local farmer Frank Lauzon is credited with having the idea—one he said came to him in a dream—to bring water from the Gunnison River to Montrose farms through a tunnel. In 1901, the state of Colorado backed the vision and gave Montrose $25,000 to get the project started.

Gunnison Tunnel Construction

By 1902, President Theodore Roosevelt and Colorado Congressman John C. Bell pushed hard to pass the National Reclamation Act—a bill that provided major federal funding for the Gunnison Tunnel Project. Construction hit several roadblocks along the way.

According to the National Park Service, work was paused several times, and the tunnel’s location was even shifted more than once before they finally settled on the East and West Portal sites we know today.

Gunnison Tunnel: Colorado Precision

Once the location of both ends of the tunnel was finalized, crews began working in 1905. West Portal, near CO 347 and Highway 50, and East Portal on the Gunnison River inside Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.

The crews had to dig an 11-foot x 12-foot tunnel that stretched nearly six miles and pitched down from East to West at a slope of about 4 feet per mile. The technology and tools available at the time must have made this seem impossible. On July 6th, 1909, the two teams met in the middle beneath the Vernal Mesa, with less than six inches of alignment error.

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